Heard a great line from Tim Keller the other day.
He likened so much of pastoral ministry to ‘kicking a Coke machine’.
People are the machines, and the gospel is the coin. The coin goes in. Its in there – the people are Christian – but there’s no appropriate output! No ‘fruit’.
Ministry then is kicking the machine until the coin drops. (I don’t think it actually involves feet…). In other words, helping people to see how the gospel affects and transform how we think about every single aspect of our lives, so that we end up with spiritual fruit, gospel shaped lives, for the glory of Jesus who died to make it possible.
I’m praying that it drops in me, pray I can help it drop in others. Better get my boots on…
In Anticipation 
Hmmm. What a profoundly un-organic metaphor! I wonder if seeds and watering seeds might be more fruitful, as it were.:)Good to read you Kieth!
Hey there Justin, thanks for dropping by!Pretty hard a for a Coke machine to give fruit, I admit… but there was something about that whole image that grabbed me.